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Transforming businesses, one sector at a time

IMDA’s Open Innovation Platform matchmakes organisations with business challenges to tech solution providers who can offer innovative solutions that scale across the sector.

Transforming businesses, one sector at a time

The digital solution Whale Cloud Asia developed helped TaFF streamline the onboarding of event exhibitors and automatically track logistics and payments. Photos: Whale Cloud Asia, TaFF

The Textile and Fashion Federation (TaFF), Singapore’s official trade association for the fashion industry, frequently organises trade events to champion homegrown fashion labels, designers and retailers. 

However, the administrative process of onboarding participating exhibitors at these events was tedious and time-consuming. Fashion event organisers, including TaFF and its members, as well as participating exhibitors faced challenges such as managing thousands of participants and the complex logistics to support them. They also have to optimise the allocation of event spaces while meeting constantly evolving requests.

TaFF needed a digital solution to automate and streamline these processes while keeping track of logistics like payments and materials submissions. However, no off-the-shelf systems met its requirements.

ANSWERING THE CALL FOR INNOVATION

Enter the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) Open Innovation Platform (OIP), Singapore’s national platform for digital innovation.

Launched in 2018, the OIP has hosted over 300 problem statements with more than S$8.5 million worth of prize monies and grown its community to a pool of more than 11,000 solution providers. The OIP provides businesses with structured, high-touch and end-to-end support – from refining problem statements, scouting and evaluating proposals to setting the key performance indicators for the prototyping process.  

Recognising the common issues its members were experiencing, TaFF joined OIP’s quarterly Innovation Call and selected Whale Cloud Asia, a subsidiary of Alibaba, to address the sector-wide challenge using a digital solution.

Whale Cloud worked closely with TaFF to develop a digital onboarding platform that reduced offline vendor management and provided real-time event and status updates on exhibition bookings. Repetitive manual administrative work was eliminated, allowing users to focus on higher value tasks like marketing and event promotion.

“The team at Whale Cloud was able to tweak its existing platform so that there were elements and functions unique to TaFF’s challenge,” said Ms Wong Jiayi, TaFF’s marketing manager. “Also, the team supported us in project management, helping to monitor the project timeline and journey.”

THE RIGHT SOLUTION STARTS WITH THE RIGHT PROBLEM STATEMENT

Common Suits founder Javin They showcasing his collection during an event organised last year, TaFF Trunks: Men’s Edition 2021.

As TaFF’s challenge involved multiple internal and external stakeholders, providing a clear problem statement that effectively addressed both the needs of end users and backend users was challenging.

OIP provided a user-centric problem refinement workshop that helped TaFF to better understand and contextualise its business problem. For example, TAFF was able to identify the pain points of its onboarding process for event exhibitors through the OIP process with Whale Cloud, and subsequently define key features to address each point. 

“The process of getting the solution was smooth. The Whale Cloud team provided the technical information that helped us to define must-have and nice-to-have features,” said Ms Wong.

Mr Liu Yuan, the senior vice-president of Business Development and Solutions at Whale Cloud Asia, added that the project team translated TaFF’s business vision into a detailed technical proposal. “There were challenges, like a lack of knowledge of the business logic of the fashion industry, but they were solved by having more frequent and effective communication sessions at all levels.”

Through the OIP, TaFF found its perfect match. Whale Cloud also had the opportunity to co-create with TaFF and learn the nuances of the industry, which enabled the successful development of a working prototype that was later refined and deployed.

SCALING UP CAPABILITIES FOR THE FUTURE

The dashboard of the digital solution that Whale Cloud Asia developed for TaFF provides key information at a glance, making it easier to track items like deliveries and payments.

Now that it has been put into action, the onboarding platform developed by Whale Cloud to gather applications from vendors for TaFF’s events has increased efficiency and minimised human errors in data collection, said Ms Wong. “It allows information to be consolidated on a singular platform, making it easily accessible. It also gives TaFF an overview of each event’s application process, so that we are able to effectively follow up with respective brands.”

“The platform helps resolve some of the immediate challenges we have,” she added. “The goal is to enhance and develop the platform, so it can incorporate other similar onboarding open-call events.” TaFF has used the onboarding platform to gather applications for their events – participants include vendors from the fashion and textile industry.

According to Mr Liu, the platform offers scalability and worry-free maintenance. “The minimal human intervention helps companies focus on business development and improving the customer experience. The solution can be easily duplicated to any other industry that has a plan to extend sales channels to e-commerce, as the first step on the roadmap to fully digitised operations.”

He pointed out that collected data on the platform can be analysed by Whale Cloud’s artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm and become part of a company’s intangible assets. Using the data insights garnered, decision makers can better position their companies and make more effective decisions for the short and long term.

“This is a constant, ongoing process, since AI algorithms are always evolving,” added Mr Liu. “Ultimately, TaFF and other members of the fashion industry will benefit from this solution and gain a competitive edge over their peers. On Whale Cloud’s part, we intend to leverage the experience gained from matured solutions to help our customers lower their capital expenditure. We have gained much understanding from working with the fashion industry, so the marginal costs will decline when we replicate the solution in similar industries abroad.”

Using its new platform, TaFF intends to host several pop-up events for local brands in Singapore this year. Shoppers who are keen on supporting local businesses can follow TaFF on Instagram for updates.

TaFF plans to continue working with Whale Cloud to add functions to the platform, such as payment and integration for more accurate insights and community engagement analysis. The added functionality will offer greater flexibility to a wider base of users, as TaFF seeks to expand the adoption of this solution to benefit more fashion brands that host and participate in trade events.

TaFF is also exploring other areas of partnership with Whale Cloud, demonstrating how prototypes can be pulled through to commercialisation naturally when solution providers address real-world business needs on OIP.

“Digital transformation is a process, not an end goal,” said Ms Wong, who felt that the OIP was an eye-opening experience that showed TaFF the unlimited possibilities of digital solutions. “With technology changing rapidly, there are always new solutions and the challenges businesses face digitally may also change with time. It is important to be clear on the pain points and to target the solutions to resolve those, and then work on developing the solution to enhance it as you go along.”

Associations and sector leads can champion the digitalisation efforts of their industry by hosting Innovation Challenges on the Open Innovation Platform to crowdsource for innovative solutions for their sector.

Source: CNA

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